Code First: Girls Ones to Watch 2014/2015

We are delighted to announce the Code First: Girls Ones to Watch. We have been searching high and low to find the most ambitious and exciting young women who are starting their careers in tech. We want to celebrate these young women's career choices and to encourage more to follow in their footsteps. The women we have chosen are all 25 and under and are either building their own startup, working in a high-growth tech startup in a non-tech role, or working as a developer in a a startup.

Make sure to check out our blog, where we've showcased in depth profiles of them all.

So without further ado, in no particular order, here are the Code First: Girls Ones to Watch 2014/2015...

Miriam Keshani Company: SparrhoRole: Chief Happiness Officer (Engagement and Product)Miriam graduated with an MPhil Micro and Nanotechnology Enterprise from University of Cambridge and a ton of experience interning in startups, and is now putting her amazing skills to use at Sparrho. Miriam dreams of becoming Head of Product, something which is well within her grasp in the next few years thanks to her ambition and willingness to learn. Miriam jumps at any to learn new skills which means she’s been involved in everything from a highly selective coding course to hacking together a Kickstarter campaign that went onto raise $1.5M - 10 times the original target.

Nadia OdunayoCompany: Pivotal LabsRole: Software EngineerNadia was all set to become an investment banker after graduating from Oxford University, until she attended a Code First: Girls course and found a love for tech that made her realise her heart just wasn’t in banking. Instead, Nadia went on to become one of the first women to attend the intensive coding course at Makers Academy, and landed a job as Software Engineer at Pivotal Labs almost immediately after, even though they weren’t hiring for her level at the time. She is the first female developer to be employed at Pivotal Labs and has been featured in Forbes amongst many other publications.

Amelia HumfressCompany: SteerRole: FounderAmelia is the founder of Steer, one of London’s leading coding schools. Steer has already made a profit in its first year and was rated as one of the best places to learn to code in the UK by The Observer. Amelia is meticulous about giving her customers have the best experience ever which is reflected in the outstanding testimonials Steer receives from its students. She caught the technology bug while working at Jimmy Choo, and started to code alongside her work as a digital marketer.

Maxim CramerCompany: SwiftKeyRole: iOS DeveloperMaxim made the brave leap into iOS development when she decided to quit her job and teach herself how to make iPhone apps. She had no safety net and took the risk to try something new. The risk paid off, giving Maxim the chance to attend brilliant industry events and even speak at Google’s CodeF event, and leading to her finding her role at SwiftKey. During her time at SwiftKey, Maxim has worked on a variety of projects including an app that was downloaded a million times in the first month after its release.

Jess RatcliffeCompany: N/A (Previously Mind Candy)Jess is extremely active in the tech world, and has been achieving within it since the age of 15 when she founded GaBoom, a peer-to-peer video game swapping site. Jess taught herself to code, built the website for GaBoom, and raised just under $100K in seed funding. Since then, she has worked at Mind Candy, built complex web apps on the side to keep her Python skills up, and turned down an offer from Peter Jones on Dragon’s Den. Jess is now working on her next billion dollar business idea.

Jenna BrownCompany: AdzunaRole: Sales AnalystJenna was seeking a role where she could make a genuine difference to her industry, and has fulfilled this by joining Adzuna as employee number 9 and playing a vital role ever since. Jenna was instrumental in fine-tuning Adzuna data that is used to provide up-to-the-minute stats about employment issues to David Cameron, and as a direct result of her creativity and data expertise, Adzuna was named Land Registry OpenData Champion in December 2013. Jenna is at the forefront of labour market data analysis, and is on track to help influence key decisions in this area for the whole country.

Imogen WetheredCompany: QudiniRole: FounderImogen is the founder of Qudini, a startup that offers an intelligent virtual customer management product that allows customers to check-in at a store or restaurant to indicate their interest in a service. Imogen has a strong track record in leadership and management which helps to drive the business, helping her to count O2, Bodean’s Restaurant and Honest Burgers as her customers. Qudini have glowing testimonials from some of the biggest names in retail, and are also part of Telefonica’s UK Wayra Academy

Rita BourmaCompany: Net-A-PorterRole: UX DesignerRita took coding lessons for the first time aged 10, and was hooked from then on. She took a Masters in Human Computer Interaction at UCL. Rita set out never to settle for a job that didn’t make you her happy and want to wake up in the morning, and she found this crafting Net-A-Porter’s user experience journey.

Octavia HirstCompany: SkillabRole: FounderAfter graduating, Octavia spent some time working with social enterprise startups, and was drawn to the technology world because it is so vibrant and exciting. She is great at creative implementation and problem solving, which led Octavia to see a gap in the market for Skillab, an affordable introduction to programming, adding the social element to the fantastic resources online. Skillab has landed a partnership with Makers Academy, and feedback from students can’t praise the course enough.

Adizah TejaniCompany: Level39Role: Deputy ManagerAdizah has been working in startups for the last three years, and can always be found doing something ‘entrepreneurial’ - whether working with Level39 companies or getting involved in social enterprise. Adizah has used her strong communication skills, excellent project management and coding ability to work on a huge amount of projects, including taking the Apps for Good programme from 2 locations to 100 locations and delivering their partnership with Facebook UK.

Mathilda Thompson Company: General AssemblyRole: WDI Developer in ResidenceMathilda has a 1st class Medical Biology degree from Edinburgh where she got the highest mark in her year. She has interned at Decoded and Big Fish and was a teaching assistant at General Assembly before becoming the Web Development Immersive Developer in Residence there. She has built a number of websites including Trust the Tip and an e-commerce site for a new blogging magazine.

Fiona DisegniCompany: Rentez-Vous Role: Founder Fiona spent time working with big names in fashion including ASOS, Burberry and Sephora, before taking the plunge and founding Rentez-Vous. Rentez-Vous is the Airbnb of fashion, a fashion rental marketplace that allows people to never wear the same thing twice while making profit from their wardrobe. Powered by Fiona, Rentez-Vous has had some great successes, including getting selected for The Bakery accelerator scheme.

Tara DruryCompany: EDITDRole: Creative Trend AnalystTara graduated from the University of the Arts London with a 1st class degree in Menswear Design. She worked as a freelance designer before joining EDITD in 2012. Here she carries out extensive research across mass, luxury and premium retail markets to produce detailed analysis and retail reports.

Kerry GallagherCompany: BlooieRole: DeveloperKerry has loved tech from a young age, ever since she saved up money from her paper round to buy her first computer. She later discovered coding and now specialises in front-end development in her work as a Developer at Blooie. Alongside her day job, Kerry runs web development agency Bear & Owl. Kerry’s expertise were put to good use when she was selected to run a workshop at jQuery UK, a massive conference full of other industry experts.

Jutta Frieden Company: Maths DoctorRole: Project ManagerJutta fell in love with tech after attending studying Technology Management, and then even more so after attending a Code First: Girls coding course, and uses the skills she learnt here to talk about tech in her role as Project Manager at Maths Doctor. She is great at taking responsibility; after working non-stop in several timezones for many weeks on a product that she had full responsibility for, Jutta launched the product and received the best feedback possible from customers. Jutta strives to go for what you genuinely care about, without letting fear of the unknown and keep you from getting there.

Laura LambertCompany: BeffitdRole: FounderLaura is founder of Beffitd, an online sizing tool that helps consumers find the correct size when shopping on the internet, and part of the EF 2013 Cohort. Since their launch, Beffitd has gone from strength to strength with Laura at the helm, working with clients like Paul Smith to help increase their customer conversion and customer purchase amounts. For one client, Beffitd tracked over 1,400 users in just over 2 months.

Emma WalkerCompany: General AssemblyRole: Programs Producer Emma is extremely business-minded and started her entrepreneurial adventure by appearing in BBC’s Junior Apprentice, aged 16. She then went on to found her own enterprise education startup, working with over 1800 schools in 6 months to teach students about essential business skills and encourage them to think in a more ‘entrepreneurial’ way. Emma knows how to code along with this, and is now putting all of these skills to use at General Assembly. Emma is responsible for making sure all of GA’s evening classes run smoothly and that participants have a great time.

Anne-Marie ImafidonCompany: Stemettes Role: FounderAnne-Marie already has a catalogue of amazing achievements. She’s the youngest girl ever to pass A-Level Computing, something she did aged 11, after being interested in why two web-pages looked different, and went on to graduate with a Masters in Mathematics and Computer Science from Oxford aged 20. Anne-Marie now wants to inspire more girls to get into STEM and so set up the Stemettes project. Led by programmer Anne-Marie, Stemettes has She has spoken about Stemettes and need to encourage more girls to enter the Science and Technology sector on BBC and ITV, as well as being featured in almost all of the UK’s major papers.

Isabel BescosCompany: BlaBlaCarRole: International Marketing Co-ordinatorIsabel speaks five languages and uses these skills to excel as part of international startup BlaBlaCar, interacting with teams from seven European capitals on a daily basis. Isabel heads a team which consistently exceeds BlaBlaCar targets, and is heavily involved in planning the growth strategy for the company. Isabel worked with the EF team in the early stages, and fell in love with tech from there. She then joined BlaBlaCar, again when the company was just beginning, and grew alongside the business.

Sofia ZabolotskihCompany: DriftrockRole: Marketing and Product ManagerSofia is amazing at proactively delivering results, and put this into practice as soon as she joined Driftrock. With no previous experience in Facebook Advertising, Sofia quickly became an expert and soon ran a £3,000 campaign for a client that achieved a £19,000 profit, resulting in the client becoming a permanent one for Driftrock and increasing their spend dramatically. Before Driftrock, Sofia co-founded a tech startup called that operated in the slums of Nairobi. She was accepted onto two accelerators and pitched in front of Bill Clinton as part of the Hult Prize.

Phoebe LebrechtCompany: Glass Digital MediaRole: FounderAfter working in social media post-university, Phoebe decided to take the leap and started Glass Digital Media. Glass gives companies a voice in the digital space and teaches them to communicate effectively in the the world of social media. Through Glass, Phoebe has worked to offer communications solutions to a range of businesses.

Sheree Atcheson Company: Women Who CodeRole: UK founderSheree launched the UK arm of Women Who Code in autumn 2013, first in Belfast and then in London, and has already achieved great success. WWC Belfast was named as one of Belfast’s leading startups by the Guardian, and WWC UK have already held a number of packed out events. Sheree has accomplished so much in such a short space of time, and has had an amazing effect on the confidence and careers of women across the UK. Alongside her work with WWC, Sheree has a day job working as a Software Engineer at Kainos Software after studying Computer Science from an early age.

Yuelin LiCompany: Swoon EditionsRole: Head of StrategyYuelin made the leap into tech after studying medicine and working in finance. Swoon Editions is an online furniture retailer which launches new designs every day to a growing community of Insiders. As the Head of Strategy, Yuelin is responsible for strategy, communications, internal innovation and talent. She's super excited about turning furniture e-commerce upside down with a healthy dose of technology, craftsmanship and data.

Alice RosamCompany: SwiftKeyRole: Software EngineerAlice joined SwiftKey with an MEng in Aeronautical Engineering and a CV which included the likes of CERN, and quickly adapted to the programming languages used at SwiftKey which were new to her. She excelled with the completion of her first project at SwiftKey which saw her develop code to test a new feature to improve the quality of SwiftKey’s language models from scratch. On the basis of this one project, she joined the languages team full time. Alice finds time alongside her work to pass her passion for tech onto others, running a weekly Code Club teaching 9-11 year olds how to write their own games.

Mathilde LeoCompany: AdbrainRole: Product OwnerMathilde’s ability to adapt, learn new things and take on leaderships has seen her rocket from intern to Product Owner at Adbrain, managing a team of 6 engineers, in a short space of time. She throws herself into new tasks including negotiating deals, giving demos with senior clients, and product managing new features from design and development to testing and launching. She also attended a Code First: Girls course to learn more about Ruby on Rails and the command line. Mathilde’s energy and enthusiasm means she performs new tasks better than industry experts and is never afraid to chip and in help out wherever needed.